"quixote" poems
Our nation is a father
Who spends sons unwisely
Wasting their wonder
On warrior blunders
In nations swelling pride
We see our children
Committing suicide
Honor bound to pursue
Patriotic truths
If mothers ran the world
Would it all be better
Or would maternal malice
Malform modern intent
Blue eyes telling lies
Of war and all its’ glories
Grey hair sitting there
In old reclining lawn chairs
Celebrating fantastic stories
But I know the lives lost
Were not always spent wisely
Were not always sacrificed justly
Why does it feel like no one else sees
Have I become Don Quixote
Fatherland motherland
Better planned
Would be brotherhood
And sisterhood
All that love spent for the good
Like this poem
We have lost our way
Perhaps better stanza
Will return the wisdom
Of our better sages
Jul 9, 2015
Jul 9, 2015 at 3:21 PM UTC
Fighting demons
Bursting bubbles
He's in my head
Among the rubbles
Seeing that most things get done
He works at it from moon till sun
He tilts at windmills only he can see
Please meet.... Don Quixote
My affliction
or my soul
hearing voices
takes its toll
Fighting what may not be there
And if it's not, why should I care?
Before the windmills in my mind
Don Quixote....you will find
An empty veldt of muddled thoughts
On a crooked road to nowhere
A wasteland of x's and noughts
With no way to get there
A wilderness of abstract themes
And wishes that I need share
The guardian of what I write
Tilting windmills in my minds air
Hidden loves
Broken hearts
So much to do
just where to start
No Sancho Panza by his side
In my head he's stuck inside
Keeping madness at arms length
Don Quixote...my minds strength
Unfinished tales
Broken dreams
So little time
Or so it seems
A wayward soldier on his way
What windmills will he fight today?
The thoughts I write reveal what's me
Allowed outside by Quixote
An empty veldt of muddled thoughts
On a crooked road to nowhere
A wasteland of x's and noughts
With no way to get there
A wilderness of abstract themes
And wishes that I need share
The guardian of what I write
Tilting windmills in my minds air
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 1:00 PM UTC
I am the quill that marks
The water-walled history
Of the sea as it may -
A swan, be it, or a black-backed
Gull.
I am the pariah who
Failed to posit his load on
A hill that hung low, like a
Sunless moon, but who can still
hark the dark
Rumbling of repetition.
I am the Quixote who took
On the wind who made the mill
Sob like a bronze leaf in grief,
Seared by the passage of
A sluggish summer.
I am the pariah, the
Quixote, and the historian
Of the rainbow runner.
©LazharBouazzi, August 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 11:32 AM UTC
There was an old man, I once knew
Peaches was the name he used
He was the drunk, set on our trunk
his body old and abused
Sharing his beer with an old horse
who caroused in the end stall
Each day by three, they'd walk by me
and stumble but never fall
His liver was a lace doily
alcohol pickled him thin
He'd been turned down, all over town
no one ever took him in
He drank his beer with ole Nellie
she could tip a bottle too
Swig and sway, like Don Quixote
as they staggered, swirling, brew
We were headed for the races
this blustery afternoon
Each planned the trip, we had to ship
I knew we'd be leaving soon
From where we trained at the fairground
we carted them to the track
Where all would race, and take what place
each earned in front or in back
Peaches rode in back of the truck
so he could drink the whole way
My uncle said, he'd soon be dead
drinking had seen his decay
We sat apart from others there
he and I were best of pals
He'd tell me tales, of life’s travails
while I ogled all the gals
That day he shared a sordid tale
of pain he caused his own son
He had shouldered blame, bore the shame
for this thing that he had done
Back when he was just a young man
a pillar of support
He took his boy, his life’s great joy
to play their favorite sport
They went to a picnic that day
he had drank one too many
On the way, to watch his son play
of fears he hadn't any
His boy was riding in the back
not thinking they skipped the seat belt
He'd rolled his car, the door ajar
surprise was all he had felt
His boy was tossed out in a field
sweet clover of timothy
The child's light hair, seen lying there
remembered so vividly
"I was a Veterinarian"
said Peaches to my surprise
"I went insane, called out in vain
but God never heard my cries"
"So now I ride where I belong
In back of my self-made bar
Hoping he, will come to take me
by tossing me from the car"
Just then a tear fell from his cheek
the pain enveloped me too
Here cried a man, much deeper than
any of us ever knew
Tate
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 2:12 PM UTC
Black & Yellow
– for Wiz Khalifa ✌
*“Stay high like I’m supposed to do, that crown
underneath them clouds, can’t get close to you.”*
On the first day, he was pushed.
Robust in stance, the other forced,
this boy down the marble stairs
of the Catholic church, the school
renovated the Summer before
Khalifa began his studies,
in junior high.
The ballet was his passion,
Latin was the language that so
fluently was spoken from
his lips. The Professor smiled,
another victory accomplished.
Khalifa’s mom was so proud of
her blue eyed boy.
Rapped in a ball, he waited
for all students & halls to clear.
Rolled over, picked himself up
took to the washroom, knowing
he needed to be presentable
for his mom stood at the school gate,
brimming with pride.
All of his dreams, mystical.
Don Quixote & The Nutcracker,
fluid streams of poetry;
Elliot, Poe, Wilde. The love
letters of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Born to dance all Principal roles,
a lovers’ prose.
By four, he was ready to
leave school. Tentatively walking,
no predators in sight, out
the main door. Leaving behind
a haunting first day. Listening to
Tchaikovsky; his release, his home,
his saving grace.
© Sia Jane
Mar 14, 2015
Mar 14, 2015 at 10:38 PM UTC
My name is Don Quixote Del La Mancha.
I am a knight in coat of arms
Give me my lance, give me my sword and give me my steed
Where be thy king in all of this
I wear the Royal Spanish Crown and Gold Seal of San Fernando Lavante
I solemnly swear that ***** and bounty shall rest with the king
Even the Catholic Church Christen thee for swift victory
I have signed and sealed orders to save the Princess Donselia Del Deboso
Then, I shall rescue her from the evil clutches of the windmill dragon
My chief architect, Poncho Sanchez is my right arm and canteen
He is responsible for fresh food rations, cold drink and support logistics
Sustenance sustains an army and sustenance sustains great men
A gallant foot soldier is he, and Poncho trails me like a Swiss Guard,
With his burro donkey friend, named El Donkey Camino De Blanco
As we approach the last horizon of the day, the code of chivalry shall not die
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013 at 2:48 AM UTC
The sun, a heavy spider, spins in the thirsty sky.
The wind hides under cactus leaves, in doorway corners. Only the wry
Small shadow accompanies Hamlet-Petrouchka's march - the slight
Wry sniggering shadow in front of the morning, turning at noon, behind towards night.
The plumed cavalcade has passed to tomorrow, is lost again;
But the wisecrack-mask, the quick-flick-fanfare of the cane remain.
Diminuendo of footsteps even is done:
Only remain, Don Quixote, hat, cane, smile and sun.
Goliaths fall to our sling, but craftier fates than these
Lie ambushed - malice of open manholes, strings in the dark and falling trees.
God kicks our backsides, scatters peel on the smoothest stair;
And towering centaurs steal the tulip lips, the aureoled hair,
While we, craned from the gallery, throw our cardboard flowers
And our feet **** to tunes not played for ours.
2.6k
She is safe in
her madness.
A comfortable
tomb, convenient,
but suspect.
I wish it were
a gentle lunacy,
like Don Quixote,
almost admirable.
But it's rabid like
a berserker or
harpy, shrieking at
love and light.
destroying everything.
Some people are
drunk on power, pride,
and control.
When they
wake up and realize
they aren't God,
they change
direction or perish.
Oct 8, 2023
Oct 8, 2023 at 6:53 PM UTC
I mean, it felt like I was a dead fish
Or something, left to rot out there in the sun,
Left there on purpose, you know, like it was
A threat—and Charles, it stinks—you know that?—
—the stench of all those old thoughts—
Yeah, thoughts…you know,
Like guppies maybe, sturgeon, or flounder.
You laugh? Why? Fish can think, can’t they? They flounder.
Suppose as we grow old the ancient thoughts
Appear as songs a child might sing—sotto voce.
Suppose they’re like the masks the actors wore
In some Commedia dell’Arte farce,
Or like the web a spider strings across
A road, hidden, dark, all subtle tension,
The strands still wet with the coagulate air…
Too wet to breath, Charles, way too wet.
There’s more. Suppose a face inside that mask
Looks back, looks out. Suppose the rings run circles round
The eyes, for fear. Suppose it’s an old face of yours,
Charles, smiling too, with all that sullen pride
You once were so capable of…so proud.
This is not the Lone Ranger, kimosabi.
Not Zorro either. Man is least himself
When he talks in his own person. So let’s
Try on that mask, shall we?
One for you and one for me.
Masks aplenty, masks abound,
Masks askance…
There, it fits. Welcome, Charles. Welcome back.
And welcome ghost.
…a ghost to prompt you in your mask, a ghost
off stage, and hoarse from shouting, diaphanous,
just like the real thing: for curiously,
at that moment while he is in you,
in situ, as it were, I will be left
au naturel—yeah, me—king for a day.
We were all meant to crawl away from the sea,
were we not?
…and I count the collective ghosts here too,
Charles…
… atavistic, frightened, unaneled,
and openly integumentary
(thus, open to the sea, but repellant
to air)
—owls, Orion, a star-scarred sky,
too cold to breath that night,
too cold not to, eh, Charles?
Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza,
like Hamlet and Horatio,
out with the watch, in search
of ghosts and fathers…
ghosts and fathers, Charles.
You remember that?
Back then, when you used to listen to me
when I spoke. You did listen, then, Charles when
I said things, right?
All those old thoughts…
When I could sing…
Charles?
Feb 15, 2010
Feb 15, 2010 at 8:52 AM UTC
I'm back in the psyche ward again.
It's my home away from home,
next to jail and the emergency room.
I sat under the bridge the other night.
It was January, and extremely cold.
I was jonesing for a drink—I knew what I had to do.
I had only been out of jail for a
couple of days for another public intox.
I narrowly avoided going back to the can today.
My nut-job girlfriend said,
"Why don't you get us some wine? " "Sure, " I said.
Shaking and sick, I walked a mile to
my favorite store that I steal ***** from.
I arrived, and had a bad feeling, but I
don't pay much attention to feelings anymore.
In and out is always the plan.
A bottle of chardonnay down the front
of the pants, and one in the coat.
I thought I had it. I was wrong.
A customer saw me and snitched me off.
I went with the manager to his office.
A cop showed up shortly afterwards.
I engaged the store-guy with talk of literature.
It turned out he was an
English major.
I wrote down the title of my book,
and slipped it to him. He put the paper
in his wallet. He told the cop that I was very cooperative.
Instead of taking me to jail,
the cop gave me a citation with a
court date on it, and let me go.
Sometimes, providence smiles on me.
On my way back to the apartment,
I was already planning the next store to hit,
I needed a drink.
The cop, from the store, pulled up along side of me,
and said,
"Your girlfriend called, she said she didn't
want you at her place anymore.
All your stuff is in front of her door."
I felt like I'd been run over by a rhino.
The cop said,
"I'll give you a lift, jump in."
When I arrived, there were two loosely
packed bags of clothes weighing around 100 pounds.
There was no way in hell that I could
have carried all that crap eight miles to Iowa City.
I grabbed a back pack, and stuffed it with a pair
of jeans, two shirts, my writing, and a copy of Don Quixote.
I went outside and waved to the cop, then headed towards town.
I finally made it back to the bridge.
I waited to get the nerve to make
my next move—steal wine.
I did it, and with no cork *****
I opened it with a broken ink pen.
I'm not complaining, it was the needed elixir
and it went down like nectar of the gods.
I drank it quick, it was three degrees out.
Life had to change.
This was getting real old.
Feb 19, 2021
Feb 19, 2021 at 12:35 PM UTC
*i've been to kenya, all that these "charity" adverts are fuelling
is ignorance, they're presupposing
all the african nations are like kindergarten,
they're insulating them... it's like that:
give a man fish or give him a fishing rod,
i.e.: give a man money or give him a
method creating & subsequently circulating wealth:
these charitable companies are insulting
african nations to be at a loss,
they're only feeding european bureaucrats
who are really the only worthwhile
charitable pay-cheque givens, odds 4-5.*
a retired lady selling poppies
for a feeling
committed suicide
being hunted by ninety-nine
charity organisations...
charity organisations...
start-ups akin to apps of
cue: shaved face, young, eager
****** venom ****** statues
of jealousy...
all the bankers' wives have
a tier system, the origin of
charity companies
(surely a wife can't be as pristine
as her husband):
first two don't count,
third: modern art "collector",
fifth: philanthropist,
seventh: possessor of an O.B.E.
and as one bemused englishman said:
king arthur and the zimmerframe table
of knights with walking sticks rather than swords:
money made people lazy, less adventurous,
let alone less tribal and communist,
adventure just became predictable,
tourism...
the modern shopper is envious of
the hunter gatherer... so envious
he wants to look the part, but live as modern
lazy allows... after all... all the gym sessions
can't go to waste... got to run standing still:
hey! don quixote! leave the windmills!
check out the treadmills... you see a caveman
anywhere in the sweaty parlours?
i don't.
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 7:31 PM UTC
ᚠ Φ
F
Θ ᚦ
no explanations
exist within a geometry outside
the circle, only architecture, sole,
yet the sole geometry of architecture
is an encircling, a lifting,
and had i wrote my poetry
in the comfort of rising beyond Marx
is socio-political schematic i would,
but i rather talk to scaffolders than to poets,
i'd rip my heart through enough thin
veil to prove it so that i shared an entombing of lips
wholly bodied with one! i rather!
care for this ******* Parisian princess
in your divorce as best you can...
i kept a cat for seven years before my neighbour
decided it was time to ***** affection
to an animal neither tilling for ably feeding
to instead choose his daughter as my wife:
i rejected feeling no compass of conversation...
the cat died, i went into the graveyard and dug
a gravestone out and buried my cat in
the moonlight: don't ever come across me and my pet!
you killed half the intelligence that was me!
**** you! humanity engaging with humanity
it plagiarises as itself an ownership to suit puppet
strings like it might tailoring,
POLAND ****** EUROPE!
POLAND ****** EUROPE!
POST COLONIAL NATIONS SEEK NEW *******
TO CRAFT THE LOST COTTON BUDS INTO
GRANULE CEMENT SET! POLAND ******
EUROPE! POLAND ****** EUROPE!
POLAND ****** EUROPE! POLAND ****** EUROPE!
MAMA RUSSIA! PAPA PRUSSIA! HOSANNA! HOSANNA!
LAUREL LEAFS AS I SAT ON THEM! THE CROWN
OF KING TU-154...
ROMANIA DONKEY DON QUIXOTE!
WHOOP WHOOP! WHOOP WHOOP GREK IZLAND
CORFU! then the postman comes with my jealousy
as within reach of hope to attain old age...
(snigger)... i hope i don't... i want million
dollar baby's truth to wake me.
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 8:04 PM UTC
the farmgirl with the green flecks in her anime eyes
is snoozing in her van. it's afternoon and she's lost her ruby slippers. she knows not where.
she charms the water fleas with her clean teeth.
she gropes through the ampules of her ample ***** where her heart is like a fox and hound.
in a glass forest. the otherwise, warm porridge is the cruel gruel of her next poem.
she gnaws on the nape of her next unborn. the naked rube of her snipe hunt
on a night with no moon.
she doesn't mind either.
her kites fly, un-flummoxed in the effulgent. unchained in the Quixote of our windmills. distilled
by charcoal fences. a net of screens, nimbly deployed across the hinterlands
of our possibilities.
now " who could that be ? "
agnes is calling and i know she just wants her computer fixed.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 11:57 PM UTC
- Wheel turns full circle -
Don Quixote would approve
- Windmills used again -
Aug 22, 2012
Aug 22, 2012 at 1:29 PM UTC
I just wanted to love someone
so much -
That I never learned to like anyone
She was dangerously close
like a molotov
to a dream.
The crease in her smile
From when she carried it closed
Or maybe from when
The one that last carried it for her.
There's a thorn in her paw;
That is a crucifix in her theart
and keeps her nailed to the pain.
It's a cross
between the love she has
for everyone
but herself,
and the hatred for me.
And I like it.
All of it.
Still though, I dream that she's in my bed
looking sweete than her taste for revenge,
it's 5 PM and she isn't wearing much
but she's in my bed, saying the things
that I need to hear,
which is just about anything at this point.
It's 8:30 pm, and I get my wake up call
and out the door I go, in my headphones go
the first thing I hear is Ed Sheeran
I hate that I enjoy his voice
because he's always ******* right
and he tells me "baby you look happier, you do"
well ****
"my friends told me, one day I'll feel it too"
and now I need a shot because ****
I really was happier with her.
7:15 in the morning
Don Quixote sits against my wall
I can't really hear his voice
but he says that it ain't right
to fight a windmill and lose.
and then he tells me
it ain't right for me and her
to be all we've ever been.
All I make is mistakes
I see them too, but it's always too late.
It's all I know how to do.
I know there's something wrong,
hence why I'm drunk when I write.
Sometimes I couldn't blink
or take a breath during those conversations.
There's so much I'm uncertain about
...so many questions
I'll never ask, again
I used to ask a lot, for someone.
not anymore.
not since i couldn't explain
what I couldn't explore.
but that thorn is still in her paw.
I wish I could've removed it.
Dec 11, 2018
Dec 11, 2018 at 2:30 AM UTC
He awakens, sighs, bones acreak at every move.
Reaches for the boilerplate, straps on his rapier
wit (but half of once it was), takes an aching
hold of his rusty lance, and mounts the ancient keyboard.
In clattering, staccato bursts, they gallop through
acres of verse: thatches of haiku and senryu,
prim English gardens of sonnet, manicured villanelles,
and mile after mile of untamed blank verse just like this.
All along the journey, he tilts at the ogres
in his mind, swiping in steady rhythm
at possesive pronouns replacing contractions,
your/you're...their/they're...its/it's...gah!
Set to charge full speed downhill from the
Valhallan heights of two courses of college English
at unedited mounds of unexamined thoughts,
he fetches up sharply; slows to a trot, looking uphill
at the hordes of English majors
eyeing him and his keyboard
with malice aforethought.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 4:06 AM UTC
About Those Purple Socks
Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
The world had no more use for any of them:
An old Communist, an old priest, an old car
All of them well into their horsemeat days
And so they fled, and crashed into the truth
On a chivalric quest for purple socks
Wandering on the road to Golgotha
Their Stations of the Cross a cinema,
A pair of Guardia, a brothel, wine
And so they fled, and fell into the Truth
There at the foot of the Altar of God
Dec 16, 2016
Dec 16, 2016 at 8:53 PM UTC
I remember walking miles with
our blackies (big garbage bags)
They were full of cans, a nickel a piece.
We were poor aluminum cowboys.
Kind of like Don Quixote and Sancho.
Chivalry wasn't our thing, but we
didn't shy away from it either.
We certainly had our share of
adventures, and misadventures too.
We headed East into the
glorious tangerine and lavender sky of
our La Mancha/Iowa City.
We should be chasing windmills, and
***** and cigarette butts;
except late one Summer day,
providence ended it all.
We sat behind our castle
(which closely resembled a grocery store.)
Your face went pallid and you fell on me.
I did C.P.R until the ambulance arrived.
You didn't make it.
I hope there are
adventures in Heaven,
my aluminum cowboy.
Jan 27, 2021
Jan 27, 2021 at 7:23 AM UTC
Love means: no surrender;
No weapons thrown to the ground,
Don Quixote charging windmills,
Just to knock the giants down.
Love means: no more evils;
No more swallowed poison pills,
Men taking deadly medicine,
But it won’t cure the chills.
Love means: coming back again;
Never having to abstain,
From every sweet indulgence,
You never can contain.
Love means: the Heart’s evince;
A radiance not know here since,
A true mind took the blade,
And the bodkin took the prince.
Love means: no masquerade;
All our truth on Parade,
You don’t have to take the cross,
But you can’t stop the crusade.
Love means: No more loss;
All deep chasms bridged across.
You can still blow out the candle,
But you can’t switch it off.
Love means: souls entangled;
Entwined as dangling bangles,
Draw about your neck,
All other feeling strangled.
Love means: complete respect;
Unconditionally, you needn’t check.
Undeniably, we all need it.
Unconsciously, you feel effects.
Love means: The grand idea;
Conquering without fear.
And until Maria returns to Judea,
The truth is: Amor vincit omnia.
Aug 30, 2010
Aug 30, 2010 at 4:22 PM UTC
Call me Don Quixote,
For I am a dreamer on a journey,
Travelling forth with noble cause
To see the wondrous sights
And save fair maidens.
And though you say,
There are no such things as Giants,
The Dragons are all dead,
That a Knight I'll never be,
I tell you this:
The journey itself is magical
In a way you will never know,
For all of your logic is but a crutch,
A way to keep to safe Roads.
And so you will never understand
That windmills were never windmills,
But Giants all along.
So call me Don Quixote,
For the Surreality I perceive
Is by far the greater than the Reality
By which you are deceived.
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 1:07 PM UTC
She decorated her soul with dreams:
the kind that can't be stolen,
not even by the inexorable march of age
which eventually robs you of yourself.
Her love was a massacre;
savaging everything in it's path,
but with a beauty that you forgave her
before she apologized.
Her eyes were lilly pads,
and her voice
was the crunch of snow underfoot,
and while you couldn't believe that she could be hurt
you knew from the moment you met her
that you'd be her unneeded Don Quixote
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 2:21 AM UTC
The Don knew well
That the hell
He raised
Was not on the mill
That sobbed on the hill.
So with his quill,
He dug a tunnel
In his encampment.
©LazharBouazzi, 10 September, 2018
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 5:06 PM UTC